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Abstract

This thesis traces the establishment and development of a functioning reformed
church in the parishes of Fife after the official Reformation of 1560. Based
principally on archival sources, especially the records of the kirk sessions which
governed the church at parish level, it examines how ecclesiastical institutions
developed and interacted with laypeople, and evaluates the progress made in the
challenging task of inculcating Protestant values and identity in Fife’s parishioners.
The first section examines the development of the reformed church in three chapters
on the parish ministry, church discipline, and reformed worship respectively. The
progress made in providing parish ministers and establishing kirk sessions was
hesitant, and it took several decades before the church’s institutions were functioning
healthily across Fife. This gradual process of reformation was not what the original
reformers wanted, but it may have in fact eased the transition to the more firmly
Protestant parish culture that emerged around the turn of the century.
The second section looks more thematically at three key aspects of the church,
focusing mainly on this latter period. The fourth chapter analyses the ministry as a
profession, while the fifth chapter goes on to discuss the efforts made to instruct the
laity in more detailed Protestant understandings from the 1590s onwards. The sixth
and final chapter returns to the subject of discipline, describing the main targets of the
disciplinary regime and evaluating the effectiveness of discipline. The church that
emerged in the seventeenth century was relatively healthy, staffed by a stable and
well-educated ministry, and was starting to make much stronger efforts to educate and
discipline the laypeople of Fife.
The thesis concludes that while the Scottish Reformation still emerges as an
ultimately successful transformation, the path to religious change was more
complicated than has been appreciated by historians.